Does your church encourage members to go out into the world to spread the gospel?
You might say what a silly question, of course it does. Well let’s examine the question as little more closely.
At church on Sunday, do you hear sermons about, how to pray for those who don’t know the Lord, how we should forgive those who hurt us and on how to keep your life clean so you will be a good example for Jesus? Are you encouraged to protect yourself against all the different sorts of evil that are present in the world?
In a world that seems to be increasingly evil, it is easy to withdraw from it and wrap ourselves up in a cloak of many colours.
What does that ‘cloak’ look like in our world today?
Some of our churches will run programs and events, modernise the service music, upgrade the technology they use, all in the guise of reaching the world with the gospel. There are any number of training programs to teach people how to spread the gospel, how to be good parents and great leaders. The thing is though the only way people out in the world are going to hear the good news of Jesus with these things is if they come into the church. This is what these things are designed for, to bring new people to church. This is what I call the modern cloak of many colours in our modern world.
So, we wrap ourselves up and then lock ourselves away in an upper room, just as the disciples were in Acts 1:13-14? “And when they were come in, they went up into an upper room, where abode both Peter, and James, and John, and Andrew, Philip, and Thomas, Bartholomew, and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon Zelotes, and Judas the brother of James. These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication, with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers.”
They were praying and worshiping together you say, what is wrong with that? Isn’t that we are doing? Yes, but the Holy Spirit hadn’t arrived then. They were without the assistance that God had promised them. They were alone. We are not! WE ARE NOT ALONE; THE HOLY SPIRIT IS HERE! We know this because Luke tells us that in Acts 2:3-4 “And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.”
The Spirit, is available to us. It wasn’t just for the early church, it was sent to help each and every one of us, until the end of time (Matthew 28:20). The members of the early church didn’t work alone, they had the Holy Spirit to help them, just like we do.
Chapter two goes on to tell us what happened. In fact, the whole of Acts tells us how the early church worked to spread the gospel. It explains how the disciples left the room, get that, left the room, and faced the crowds of Jerusalem. They went out and preached to gospel, they moved among the people. They confronted them with their sins and told them of the grace of God and the power Jesus had to save them from eternal death. They faced the evil in their world and it was an evil world. It was just as evil as it is now if not more so. I know that we think our world is the evillest time in existence but I’m not willing to make that call because you know what, I haven’t lived in any other lives, I have not personal knowledge of what the world was 100 years, 500 years or even 2000 years ago and history writers have a habit of white washing what life was really like.
Yes, most of us have regular jobs and work among those who don’t know the Lord. Some of our work mates will even openly ridicule the church, Christians and take the name of the Lord in vain. How do you react? Do you just keep your head down, doing your work to the best of your ability and giving more than one hundred percent effort, praying that people will see Jesus this way? Are we too worried about our repetitions? We avoid doing things because we might look bad.
Yes, there are things that we shouldn’t do, like young engaged couples not living together will send a message of being faithful to God. Not drinking to excess, even at public venues, says that God gives us self-control. Making that our language remains clean will also be a witness to the power of God. But by not engaging with people we are forgetting that wherever we God the Lord will go with us, if we go in His strength and in order to reach those who are in need of His love and salvation. It is important for us to build relationships with those who need to know the love of Jesus. We cannot and will not build those connections while we are still sitting in an Upper Room. I heard about one Minister who cancelled every small group in his church except one, the Saturday Morning Prayer Meeting. His reasoning was that the church members were spending so much time at the church in meetings and they needed to get out into the world and reconnect with it. The Saturday Morning Prayer Meeting remained in order to enable them to support each other in their concerns about those they were trying to build relationships with.
Are you still hiding in the Upper Room? This is a question that only you can answer. You need to ask God to show you if you need to do more to reach the sick, evil and desperate world that surrounds you. After all we are called to be in the world and to tell the whole world about the love of Jesus. “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.” Matthew 28:19-20.
Did you notice those five words in verse 20: “I am with you alway,” and did you hear how long God is going to help you do what needs to be done “even unto the end of the world.”
Have a look around today and make sure that you are not still in that Upper Room. If you are, there is only a door between you and the world. God wants you to open that door and step outside in His strength, with the courage and guidance that His Holy Spirit will give you.
Isaiah 6:8 says: “Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me.”
What do you say to the Lord today?